


Beeswax Cornucopia

by AoifeMoran



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Crossover, Implied Character Death, M/M, Panem AU, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 04:47:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1065935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AoifeMoran/pseuds/AoifeMoran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In another world, John and Sherlock won the 50th Hunger Games.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beeswax Cornucopia

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from the tumblr meme of replacing Benedict Cumberbatch's name with any two words that start with B and C respectively; the fic was inspired by the specific combination.  
> I know in Hunger Games canon, the 50th Hunger Games had each district supply two Tributes, and these were the Games that Haymitch won, but in this universe, I have decided that this Quarter Quell had the districts supply two Tributes, and two Victors instead.

He wakes up every morning with soft black curls draped across his arms, a marked contrast to the angular body pressed against his. Sharp elbows seem to insinuate themselves exactly where they're least wanted; where the potential for pain is the greatest, but then, they were raised to fight almost from birth, and old habits die hard.

Old habits, and old aches, and as Sherlock shifts against him with a sleepy mutter, his shoulder twinges - a reminder of his first Games, when a bronzed boy from District 7 had shot him with a slingshot, but neglected to make sure he'd finished the job. The arena then had been a desert, complete with sheer cliffs, spiny plants, stifling heat by day and deadly chill by nights. The Cornucopia was a blinding beacon in the midst of an oasis, shining gold and bright and promising water, and swift death for any tribute careless enough to be spotted heading for it.

But he was from District 2. He knew deserts, knew how to fight, knew how to win. 

And a lucky shot with a rock and a sling had almost taken him out of the running entirely. It was only the boy's carelessness in making sure his victim was truly dead that had saved him.

He'd learned from that boy's mistakes, though he'd never learned his name, and the lesson had served him well in his first Quarter Quell. The one where he'd met Sherlock.

Four tributes had been drawn from each District, in those Games. Two victors, and two more children reaped as in any other year. Two tributes could win, the Gamemakers had announced, but only if one was a victor, and the other, newly-reaped. That year, the Games were set in an arena made to look like the shell of a once-great city, sooty concrete walls providing ample places to hide, and as many opportunities to get lost. Eleven tributes, of the fourty-eight in the arena, had died that first night, and the usual alliances had been forgotten, tributes banding together by district instead. 

The other Victor from District 2 was Accalia, who'd won her Games seven years before he'd even been elegible to enter, the Games where the first night had been such a bloodbath only five tributes had survived, and she'd spent a week hunting the rest down, one by one, like animals. They hadn't put much hope in their two newest tributes. Tyrins, who was short and muscular and handy with a sledgehammer, but only 13, and far too trusting; and Sherlock, who was tall and lanky and an insufferable know-it-all, and behaved like a morphling.

But it had been Sherlock who'd found the two girls from District 1, dead, but with no marks, no hints as to how they'd been killed. It had been Sherlock who'd figured out that someone was playing games with them, toying with them. Listening to him rattle off his deductions, John had been filled with a sense of wonder he hadn't thought he'd ever feel again, after the carnage of his first Games. But his deductions had saved them, in the end, though they hadn't saved the old tribute from District 12, or any of the other tributes caught in the madness of the boy from District 1. 

He shudders, remembering the cruel eyes of the deceptively young-looking boy from District 1, who was mad, absolutely mad, and wanted to win at all costs, laying traps and explosives for unwary tributes who thought he was harmless. It was the victor from District 1 who was the real threat, they'd thought.

Sebastian Moran. He'd ripped a tribute's throat out with his teeth, some said. Pulled one girl's still-beating heart out her chest, and eaten it, like the savage he was, according to others. His rugged good looks had won him sponsors, and his brute strength and marksmanship had made sure he kept them. And compared to him, what could little Jimmy Moriarty do that was worse?

They'd learned, soon enough; seen the flayed remains of a girl from District 3, who'd grabbed a spool of wire and a toolkit at the start, before she ran. Not far enough, nor fast enough, and when they next saw him, Jimmy had asked them if they liked his new shoes, and -

John swallows, fighting back bile threatening to rise in his throat. Even now, years later, with Moriarty and Moran both dead and gone, with him and Sherlock safe in District 2's Victor's Village, the memories of the atrocities that pair had committed still threaten to overwhelm him.

He breathes deeply, in through his nose and out through his mouth, like one of his mentors had taught him, when he was younger, and tries to focus on the fact that it's been years since their games, the fact that they are three years from the next Quarter Quell - the third one, the seventy-fifth Hunger Games - and the fact that Sherlock is right beside him, anchoring him to the world of the living.

They are done playing games, John reassures himself, settling into bed. All they have to do, now, is appear every so often at some event for Victors. They aren't their district's youngest, after all, so it's not as if they're required to mentor the new Tributes. They are done with the Games, and all that's left now is to live, and that's the easy bit, isn't it?


End file.
